Gustavo Leigh

General Gustavo Leigh, who has died aged 79, was - with Augusto Pinochet - the last surviving member of the military junta that seized power in Chile in the bloody coup d'etat of September 11 1973, which deposed President Salvador Allende.

A rabid anti-communist, Leigh initially turned down the post of air force commander-in-chief, on the grounds that he did not share the elected leader's socialist beliefs. After consulting fellow officers, however, he changed his mind and was sworn in on August 18 1973. Less than a month later, on Leigh's personal orders, Hawker Hunter jets would attack the La Moneda palace to extinguish the resistance led by the very president he had sworn to serve. Film of the attack became, perhaps, the single most widely reproduced image of the coup. But it was a decision that Leigh never repented; he insisted it had saved many lives. The coup, he declared, had been launched in order "to extirpate the Marxist cancer in Chile".

From the beginning, Leigh developed serious differences with Pinochet. The army commander was a latecomer to the coup conspiracy, and Leigh had been delegated to recruit him. In an interview for the BBC last December, Leigh recalled that Pinochet's first reaction had been, "You do realise that this could get us all killed." Once on board, however, Pinochet had been determined to play the leading role, despite the fact that Leigh had assumed command of his branch of the armed forces three days earlier than Pinochet, and was therefore technically the senior officer.

With the support of the other two junta members - Admiral José Toribio Merino and Carabineros chief General César Mendoza - Pinochet argued that the army took precedence over the air force. The two men's rivalry was further complicated by Leigh's belief that the junta's job was "to sweep up the mess the Marxists had left behind, clean up house and hand over power as soon as this mission was completed".

Despite his hardline, however, Leigh was utterly opposed to Pinochet's attempts to cling indefinitely to power, and it was this that would eventually lead to his downfall. In 1977 he opposed the referendum called by Pinochet to seek public backing against a UN resolution criticising his human rights record. Leigh described the referendum as "typical of governments in which power is in the hands of a single dictator".

The following year he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera there should be a timetable for the restoration of civilian rule. He even went so far as to say that the Chilean experience had proved that "ideas cannot be abolished through decree laws" and that the country should permit leftist parties "in the same way the Swedes do".

On July 24 1978 Leigh was summoned to Pinochet's office in central Santiago. Invited to resign, he refused, and was later removed by means of a decree signed by the other three members of the junta. He was accused of "back-tracking on numerous occasions on the principles that inspired the September 11 movement".

The sacking of Leigh caused a major crisis in the regime. Eighteen other air force generals resigned rather than agree to replace him, with the position eventually going to the then health minister, General Fernando Matthei. For his part, Leigh stayed largely out of the public eye for the remainder of his life, except for a sharp exchange of views in 1991 with Matthei, who had declared that the generals who resigned in 1978 were traitors.

He voted "no" in the 1988 referendum on whether Pinochet should stay in power, and supported the presidential candidacy of Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin in the 1989 elections.

Leigh had been involved in running a real estate business until March 1990, when he was shot at almost point-blank range by communist guerrillas of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Five 9mm bullets entered his head and body; one of which caused him to lose his right eye. Although he recovered from his injuries, Leigh's general health began to deteriorate. Nonetheless, not long before he died - and despite his personal dislike of Pinochet - he took part in a meeting organised by former collaborators of the military regime to protest at the former dictator's detention in London.

Leigh, whose paternal grandfather was a British immigrant to Chile, had been one of the first generation of pilots to enter the Chilean air force's Capt Avalos training school. Later in his career he became its director.

He leaves his wife, Gabriela García, and six children from two marriages.

 Gustavo Leigh, military officer, born September 19, 1920; died September 29, 1999